The University of California, Irvine's (UCI) Gynecologic Oncology Fellowship Program is requesting continued support for the Fellowship Training Program, which has been operating for over 30 years, and has been supported for 15 years by this T32 grant. The training grant is administered by UCI's National Cancer Institute designated Chao Family Comprehensive Cancer Center. The Gynecologic Oncology Fellowship Program is dedicated to training physician scientists in the sub-specialty of Gynecologic Oncology by providing multiple levels of interaction between basic and clinical scientists to facilitate the transfer and exchange of information. The Fellowship Program provides trainees with opportunities for the practical application of skills in the design and testing of scientific hypotheses. Trainees receive two years of laboratory research training in the basic sciences followed by two years of clinical training, with a focus on clinical/translational research. There are seventeen Faculty Mentors and fourteen Collaborators, made up of basic scientists and clinical researchers from eleven departments in the School of Biological Sciences and School of Medicine. Faculty Mentors have research concentrations in the following areas: in-vivo functional onco-imaging, structural molecular biology, growth factors and signaling, cell transformation and carcinogenesis, cancer epidemiology and cancer genetics, cancer screening and prevention, and experimental therapeutics. All of the training faculty have active, peer-reviewed research grants directly relevant to cancer research, or cancer-related. Competition is keen for the one or two available entry-level Fellowship positions annually. Recruitment for the Fellowship Program draws from the 1,200 Obstetrics and Gynecology senior residents nationwide. Over 95% of the graduates from the UC Irvine Gynecologic Oncology Fellowship Program have assumed academic faculty positions (see Table 12B). Training features of the program include didactic coursework in the areas of responsible conduct of research, biostatistics and epidemiology, and cancer-related electives, national scientific meetings, and numerous other multi-disciplinary seminars, lectures and symposia. Support is requested for three Postdoctoral Fellowship positions in each year of the grant. Fellows will be supported by funds from the training grant for the first two years, and by newly committed institutional funding from the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology for the final two years of their training. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: The Fellowship Program will train the physician scientists in the field of Gynecological Oncology for future generations of not only grateful cancer patients but for future medical students and residents interested in finding the cure for cancer. Our graduates will continue to be distinguished members of the academic medical field, leading and contributing to new advances in diagnosis and treatment of gynecologic cancer.